Former Post Office and Royal Mail Offices, Royal Leamington Spa

Former Post Office and Royal Mail Offices, Royal Leamington Spa

A former general post office built in 1870 to designs by James Williams in Italianate style, with extensions designed by Edward Cropper added in the early 20th century. The 1970s sorting office and vehicle depot block to the east is excluded from the listing. The building is limestone clad with a slate covered roof.

The post office building is rectangular in plan, with a post office on the ground floor and offices to the east and above.

The 1870s block is two-storeys high and ashlar faced, four bays wide. The ground floor is rusticated with plain bands. The front elevation (south) has two sash windows flanked by door surrounds with hoods on lion's head brackets. The left-hand door surround includes a stone plaque under the hood with raised lettering reading 'POST OFFICE'. The first-floor sash windows have architraves with console-bracketed cornices and blind balustrade aprons. The main entablature consists of a dentilled cornice and balustrade parapet with a hipped slate roof.

To the right is a four-storey block, set back from the main elevation. It has three bays, with a double-door central entrance flanked by horned sash windows, and similar sashes on the other three floors. The ground floor is rusticated and a sill band separates the second and third floor (which is a later addition).

The east elevation has three and five bays. The right three bays are part of the original block and have the same design; the other five bays are part of the 1911 three-storey extension and have been built in a similar style, with a side entrance on the ground floor, solid window aprons and a plain ashlar parapet which hides the third-storey windows. The rear elevation faces the River Leam and consists of a three-storey block with three bays to the same design as the five bays on the east elevation. To the left is a plain ashlar-faced three-storey block with three bays (the third storey was added later). The windows on all external facing elevations are timber sashes. Within the centre is a courtyard which has been partially in-filled and includes a number of windows, some of which have been altered.

The original post office is located at the front of the building and is now a card shop, with the current post office located to the rear on the site of the former 1911 sorting hall. The original post office counter has been removed. The original plasterwork and decorative cornicing survives above the lowered ceiling. To the right of the card shop is the main stairwell with an ornate cast-iron staircase, including strings with foliate detailing and a timber handrail. Behind the stairwell and on the floors above are offices and storerooms. The offices above the original 19th-century post office, to the south side of the building, retain original features including decorative ceiling cornicing (above the late-20th-century lowered ceiling panels) and chimneybreasts. The former postmaster's office in the middle of this block may retain a late-19th-century fireplace. The former telephone exchange room is located on the west side of the first floor, spanning the 1870 and 1911 blocks; no telephone equipment survives. Further stairwells are located in the 1911 extension to the south and the other 1911 block to the east. The offices to the upper floors of the Italianate north-west 1911 extension and the offices within the 1911 blocks to the north-east and south-east have undergone greater alteration and are more utilitarian. An opening has been broken through on the ground floor of the former external east wall to provide access to the 1970s vehicle depot and lifts have been inserted within the centre of the building. The late-20th-century lifts and lift shafts are not of special architectural or historic interest.